Those golden lights displaying your name
Attempts at lie-detection have been around ever since we first deceived - pretty much as soon as humans walked upright. Most countries outside the US have moved on from the polygraph - although prosecutors in India are now using electroencephalograms to “prove” guilt, despite the science being bitterly disputed.
So are there any reliable indicators of mendacity? Tics - fidgeting, stuttering - are mistakenly attributed to cheats across many societies (psychologist Charles Bond has noted this belief in 63 countries) without recourse to scientific proof.
Ditto the avoidance of eye contact - dropping your inquisitor’s gaze is often given anecdotally as confirmation of guilt.
“Eye contact has been proven the least accurate thing to watch for,” says Stan Walters, author of The Truth About Lying. “Most reliable cues typically come from the voice, in specific, the words.”
Professor Richard Wiseman (…) says that common sense is the lie-buster’s best weapon, and affirms that it is aural rather than visual clues that are key. (…)
“Lying taxes the mind,” Wiseman explains. “It involves thinking about what is plausible. People tend to repeat phrases, give shorter answers, and hesitate more. They will try to distance themselves from the lie, so use far more impersonal language. Liars often reduce the number of times that they say words like ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’. To detect deception, look for aural signs associated with having to think hard.”
According to the Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services, another side-effect of lying that forensic interrogators will look for is the avoidance of verbal contractions - using “I am” instead of “I’m” and so on.
Nature reported another study by Ioannis Pavlidis of Honeywell Laboratories in Minnesota. He established that many people blush when they are telling a lie - a subtle, but detectable, phenomenon.
